I've used the microphone on Skype, iMovie, and a few video games, and playback has all been normal (both ears). Are those programs just playing mono in both ears, or are they pulling actual stereo from my mic? I see some mics advertised as "stereo microphones", which is confusing me.

I know about Fill Left/Right, which works fine, but is that what I have to do every time I want to narrate? And if so, is there a way to have a Fill effect auto-applied to all my recordings? Thank you!

Thanks for posting these pictures. My Audio Output Mapping does indeed look as yours does, and the blank Left channel on my track doesn't have those dashes. I'm assuming you're referring to the dashed line? The line on my Left channel is just a solid, blank line with no waveform.

So from this I can assume I'm not using a standard track. Does this mean it's normal for USB microphones to only record into one channel?

If your audio track doesn't look like the one in the image (no dashed line, no circuit-look icon), then it's either a 5.1 track, a Standard track or a Mono track. The image below shows what Standard and Mono tracks look like.

If you have a Standard track, then I don't know what the problem could be. When I record to a Standard track with my mono USB mic, I get sound out of both speakers. Maybe a driver issue?

I've used the microphone on Skype, iMovie, and a few video games, and playback has all been normal (both ears). Are those programs just playing mono in both ears, or are they pulling actual stereo from my mic? I see some mics advertised as "stereo microphones", which is confusing me.

I don't see in your post where you described HOW you're recording. Are you using Audition, or the Pr voice over tool?

You replied that your audio looks like Jeff's first reply picture. That means you're recording to the left channel of a stereo track. You would expect playback to be on the left track. If you record onto a mono track, the default playback will come out of both channels.

If you create a mono track and record into that, your future problems will be solved.

I don't know what Audition is, or the voice over tool. I'm just doing this all out of the audio mixer. I plug in my mic, change an audio track's input to my mic, enable recording, hit the record button, and hit play. And I am indeed recording to the Right channel; my earlier comments about the picture looking like my setup was referring to something else.

Look at the track header to the smal icon (4 small sqaures) that appears immediately to the left of the word :Audio in the wave form (green). If you click on this symbol, it will bring up a dialog that will allow you to assign the track that has audio to both the left and right channels. Once set, this applies to all audio clips placed on that track. You don't need to re-record each clip, or apply the :Fill Left or Fill Right effects to each clip.